Tag: Environmental

Poetry Friday: Sedoka

Image from the front page of The Burlington (CO) Record

I thought I was writing this poem to the photo that appeared on the front page my hometown newspaper, but as it turns out, the poem also has echoes in an extraordinary book that I finished just last night. THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell is set in Nebraska in 1935 between two cataclysmic environmental events: the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River (24 inches of rain in 24 hours). So it’s a story of the land, but inseparably, it’s a story about the people there. Here’s how Russell (with James Riding In) describes what she attempted to do in THE ANTIDOTE:

THE ANTIDOTE uses fantastical conceits to illuminate the holes in people’s private and collective memories, the willful omissions passed down generation to generation, and the myths that have been used by the U.S. government and White settlers to justify crimes against the citizens of Native Nations and the theft of Native lands.

It was a book that puzzled me at first, then fascinated me, then horrified me, then made me read the last hundred pages at a gallop (which is why I’m “late” posting), then ultimately left me with some measure of hope.

Which brings us back to the photo and the poem. I grew up at the edge of the same Pawnee lands in THE ANTIDOTE, in a part of the country where White farming techniques have resulted in loss of topsoil and the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. And I grew up with the myth of the noble (White) farmers, who toiled at the whim of the sparse rainfall and the destructive summer storms, and whose hope was what kept them going.

It’s time to tell the truth. All of it. And it’s time to listen to the land and agree to change the ruinous human part of our relationship with her. She wants to live, and she can heal, if we let her. If we help her.

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Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins. You can find there the Poetry Sisters who had the bandwidth to write to this month’s challenge, to write a sedoka, along with others who joined in the challenge.

PLEASE NOTE THESE CHANGES IN THE POETRY FRIDAY HOSTING SCHEDULE: Heidi and Margaret are changing places, so Heidi will now host on August 15, and Margaret will host on September 5.

Poetry Friday: Fireflies

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Another garden/yard poem this week. I wondered in my comment on Ruth’s post last week if I’d see fireflies this year. I will never again take any of my more-than-human neighbors for granted. But we’ve been blessed. They are still here…for now. Gratitudes to Linda for the “clunker” from which this poem was born: “stir stars in a clockwise motion.”

Next week is a Poetry Sister challenge week (and I think I better get started now!): we’re writing  Raccontinos. 

The week after that, on Friday, July 4, is the challenge I posed on the roundup host calendar, doubling as the Inkling challenge:

Please join us in writing poems of protest on our nation’s birthday. Let’s use our voices and our art to make some noise! Feel free to write in praise of democracy and patriotism if you’ve just about had it up to here with all of the assorted “Nonsense on Stilts” (a term coined by Jeremy Bentham and also the title of a book by Massimo Pigliucci that Mr. Mary Lee is currently reading).

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Apples In My Orchard.

Slice of Life: Some Good News (for once)

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

The headline caught my eye, “Eastern monarch butterfly population nearly doubles in 2025.”

Fantastic…but 2 x 0 still = 0. I haven’t seen a monarch in my yard for several years now.

And when you dig into the article, you find that the doubling is calculated by the acreage of butterflies overwintering in Central Mexico. They are currently taking up 4.4 acres, up from 2.2 acres the year before. 4 acres is about 19,000 square yards. A football field is is 6,400 square yards. Butterflies are taking up about 3 football fields-worth of forest. Oof.

But this was supposed to be good news, so let’s focus on the doubling, and what we can all do to keep the doubling going:

  1. Plant milkweed. Even if it doesn’t fit into your carefully planned landscaping, plant some anyway. (And get your neighbors to buy into the idea, if you can.) Milkweed is the ONLY host plant for monarch eggs and caterpillars.
  2. Don’t use herbicides or pesticides. It won’t kill you to have some diversity in your lawn, and if you care so much about not having a few unplanned visitors in your flower beds, get out the weeding fork. (This one’s a harder sell, but get your neighbors to buy into the idea, if you can.)

That’s it. Two things. But if you want to feel like you’re doing SOMETHING to help these beautiful creatures double again, there you go. Local friends, Wild Birds Unlimited has a native plant sale going on. You can get swamp milkweed plants for $5.00. Everyone else, check out your local native plant nurseries, get out your trowel, and do your part.

Here’s the article. I wanted to get my two cents in before you clicked over. 🙂